


Go Walking Through the Valley

by Verecunda



Category: The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Post-Canon, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 14:39:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16410359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verecunda/pseuds/Verecunda
Summary: Before leaving Hill House, Theodora pays one last visit to the brook.





	Go Walking Through the Valley

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cookinguptales](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookinguptales/gifts).



> I happened to see your ToT letter just after rereading the book, and I couldn't help writing something. I hope you enjoy it!

They were leaving Hill House. As soon as the necessary formalities were over - the procession of emergency services, the constrained telephone calls with Eleanor’s sister, and the inevitable ordeal of the inquest - Dr. Montague had gathered them in the parlour, looking old and grey and defeated.

“I am calling an end to the experiment,” he had said. “It’s simply too dangerous. Hill House has been quiet since - since Eleanor died, but I daren’t run the risk. I had no idea at all of the danger I was putting you all in. I insist that we leave, all of us, tomorrow morning.”

Neither Theodora nor Luke had offered any argument.

Now it was morning and they were out the front of the house, packing their things into their respective cars. They were leaving as they had come: Theodora in her own car, the doctor and Luke in another. (Mrs. Montague and Arthur had left as soon as the authorities in Hillsdale could spare them, Arthur being needed at his school.) This was all done under the eye of Mrs. Dudley, who stood, granite and statuesque, in the front door, as if to bar the way of anyone who might change their mind at the last minute and go rushing back inside. No fear of that, Theodora thought scornfully. I’ll be quite happy to put this vile place behind me for good. Except…

In what had quickly become a well-honed instinct, she darted a glance out the corner of her eye at Hill House. It loomed above her, straining against the confines of the veranda, the tower dark and swaying against the brilliant blue of the June sky, staring her down.

In a swift, decided movement, she slammed her trunk shut. “I want to go down to the brook.”

The doctor and Luke, startled by the clear high note of resolution in her voice, turned to look at her over the hood of her car.

“I want to go down to the brook,” she said again, more directly to them this time.

Dr. Montague’s expression was doubtful. “I don’t know if that is such a good idea. The grounds have been safe during the day, but now…” He trailed away, helpless. Theodora almost felt sorry for him. He had spent years making himself an expert in the supernatural, learning all the rules, and now, in just over a week, Hill House had left him all adrift.

“I’m going,” she insisted, and looking at him imploringly, she added, “We never got to have our picnic.”

“Want me to come with you?” asked Luke. “Someone to keep off the rabbits?”

She laughed. “Thank you, but I’m sure I’ll manage.” To the doctor, she said, mollifyingly, “I promise I shall scream very loudly if anything happens, and you can both come running as fast as you like. Otherwise, I’ll only be five minutes.”

He was still reluctant, but at last she felt him give way, and with a sigh he said, “Go on. We won’t leave without you.”

She hadn’t thought they would. By some unspoken agreement they had arranged to leave Hill House all together. Safety in numbers, as if they all shared the same fear that if they tried to leave alone, the house would catch them, just as it had caught Eleanor…

Without a backwards glance, Theodora left the drive and crossed the grounds. The grass was lush and brightly green, shining with dew. She could feel the gazes of Luke and the doctor as she went, their apprehension and resignation on her behalf. Even more keenly, she felt the dark glare of the house at her back as she went, following the same path that she and Eleanor had taken on the day of their arrival. Then, they had gone running, laughing, delighted and grateful for each other’s company after the rude shock of seeing Hill House for the first time. Now it was just her. But even as she went, she could almost imagine that she was not alone, that some other went with her, so close that they almost went arm-in-arm, and in the breeze that rippled through the trees, she thought she heard a whisper, almost an echo of her own voice that day: _“Follow, follow.”_

When at last she reached the edge of the brook she stopped suddenly, remembering how she had almost tumbled headlong. Then, Eleanor had caught her hand, and they had tumbled back onto the grass together. The memory of their mad, careless laughter was in her mind even now. They had both been giddy, girlish, silly. Perhaps it was the spell of the house catching them for the first time. Perhaps Eleanor had already been caught in it too long, even before Theodora arrived. Perhaps by then, it had already been too late.

She looked back, already knowing that from here the house was out of sight, screened by the trees; yet she still she felt it, grim and gloating. Upstairs, in the blue room that had been Eleanor’s, a small eddy of air stirred the curtains, and the old floorboards sighed beneath the weight of the wardrobe (empty now, for all of Eleanor’s bright new clothes had gone back to the city with Eleanor’s sister). In the parlour, soot dropped softly in the fireplace. And, somewhere in the depths of the house, a door left open during their final preparations swung smartly shut.

“Oh, Nellie Nell Nell,” she said aloud, “how could you want to stay here? There aren’t even any stone lions for you.”

In the days since Eleanor’s death she had spent so long listening, reaching out blindly to find some trace of her still in the house, however faint amidst that great encompassing darkness. Yet even as she had, she had wanted to laugh. It seemed impossible, stupid. How could _Eleanor_ haunt Hill House? Timid, retiring Nell - she would be lost among all that overstuffed Victorian lavishness, hidden away by the overdone carvings, the wooden bunches of ribbons and fruits and grotesque cherubs’ faces, smothered by all the cushions and padding, until she was nothing more than a faint sigh in the air, a light tread on the rug, a little breath to stir the beads on the lamps in the parlour.

I ought to have let her come with me, she thought, not for the first time. I ought to have said, yes, of course, my Nell, pack your things at once and we’ll go home together. Even if we ended up hating the sight of each other, it could only have been better than being swallowed up whole by Hill House.

But she had been too scornful then, too angry, too irritated by Eleanor’s desperate, clinging need for affection, her ridiculous _susceptibility_. Really, she thought, with an involuntary lingering contempt, Eleanor would have fallen in love with anyone or anything that paid her the slightest bit of attention. And yet - _and yet_ -

The memory of their walk through the dark grounds crowded in upon her, taunting her with the weight of all that had gone unsaid, all the greater now that it never now could be said. The chance had gone forever, with Eleanor. What might have happened, if the question had been asked, if she hadn’t looked round to see -

She shivered in the bright sunlight. Hateful, beastly house, she thought. You knew, didn’t you, you saw what might have happened. Dr. Montague was more right than he knew, when he said the house wanted to separate us. It wanted Nell all to itself, and whenever it thought there was a danger I might steal her away from it, it put itself between us. And now she’s gone, taken into the darkness. Oh, Nell.

Make it your own, Eleanor, if that’s all you have now. Don’t fade away into the darkness. Be a poltergeist; bring stones falling down on the roof. Dance through the halls in your red sweater. Waltz through the kitchen and move Mrs. Dudley’s dishes about. Come out into the grounds and walk through the meadow.

“Be happy, Nell,” she said. “Please be happy, that’s all.”

For a minute or more she stood there, looking down into the sparkling water and listening, but nothing came to her, and at last she started back the way she came. Will I remember, she wondered, as she passed out from beneath the trees, or when I drive out through those gates again, will it all just melt away, like a dream?

She was halfway across the lawn when she suddenly stopped in her tracks, and, as if hearing someone call her name in the distance, looked up at the house. It glowered there against the backdrop of the hills, and she felt it looking back at her, arrogant in its triumph, brimming with its evil. But at the same time, in one of those moments of clarity, she was conscious of another gaze from those empty windows, one whose weight and expression she already knew so well, and she thought of Eleanor’s wide, startled eyes, not turning away from her now, but watching her go, something soft that lingered in the darkness.

“Good-by, my Nell,” she whispered, knowing she would be heard. Then she crossed the lawn to where Luke and Dr. Montague waited.

“I’m ready,” she said. “Let’s go.”


End file.
